Detained ENDSARS activist swindles woman of N.8m

Francis Adekunle was one of the ENDSARS protesters, whom sympathisers of the October 20, 2020 anti-police protest like to call activists. He just swindled a 32-year-old woman of N800,000.

It was a complicated online romance scheme he pulled off with a death-roll convict from where he was detained at the Ibara Correctional Center, Abeokuta, Ogun.

According to the Ogun NSCDC Public Relations Officer, Dyke Ogbonaya, while parading the suspect at the command’s headquarters in Abeokuta on Tuesday,  Adekunle was released in October since he was detained following the violent EndSARS protest of 2020.

While in the correctional facility, the suspect was said to have carried out the fraud through an accomplice, who the NSCDC said was also on death roll at the correctional centre.

Ogbonaya said the suspect initiated a relationship with the woman via a Facebook account, lying to the woman that he had issues with his boss, who had later facilitated his being in the facility.

“He then introduced the victim to another inmate he called his uncle who is on death roll at the facility as his uncle and sought her assistance to secure his freedom,” he said.

The “fake uncle” also introduced the woman to a lawyer.

“The woman has been crediting the lawyer’s account so as to release her lover from the facility,” he said.

The defence corps arrested Adekunle at the trailers park, Kuto, Abeokuta, but his accomplices, including one Lucky, are yet to be accused.

But Adekunle denied defrauding the woman, though he admitted they were in love.

The NSCDC said it would hand him to the police.